This time I got an email claiming that a I’ve used a photo on my Christmas site without crediting the photographer correctly and I could get into some trouble… (I couldn’t it’s all a scam… There are real emails along these lines, but they’re done a lot better than this one!)
The email came from a ‘Victoria Boyd’ of ‘Nationwide Legal’ or ‘Nationwide Services’:
Dear owner of https://www.whychristmas.com/cultures/new-zealand,
We hope this message finds you well. We represent the Intellectual
Property team for a prominent organization, and wish to address a matter
concerning an image linked with our client.Image Details: https://i.imgur.com/qrYAutB.jpg
Location of Usage: https://www.whychristmas.com/cultures/new-zealandIt’s been found that this image is displayed at the mentioned
location. We’d like to kindly remind you to ensure that our client receives
proper credit. Please provide a clear and direct link either beneath the
image or at the page footer within the next five business days.We trust you understand the importance of addressing this promptly.
Please acknowledge that merely removing the image won’t settle this matter.
If there’s no action from your side within the mentioned period, we may
have to refer to case reference No. 84531 and consider steps aligned with
the provisions of the DMCA Section 512(c).For reference purposes, any historical usage can be verified via the
Wayback Machine at https://web.archive.org, the standard digital archive.Consider this message as an official reminder. We appreciate your
prompt attention to this matter and look forward to your understanding and
cooperation.We kindly request communications in English for clarity.
Regards
Victoria Boyd
Trademark Attorney
This company ‘Nationwide Legal’ (or Nationwide Services) have been doing this scam for years with several different domains. The email I got had an @nationwidelegal.biz email address.
The email from them is completely fake.
They claim an image is under their client’s copyright, but then have a link to it on Imgur – a site where anyone can upload an image. That in itself is a HUGE red flag. A proper legal company would host the image themselves or would link to it on their client’s site…
However, there are two, much bigger, issues with their claim.
- The image they claim belongs to their client, is a free stock photo, released without any copyright limitations – so it CANNOT have any copyright infringement.
- I have NEVER used that image on my website!
They claim they can prove I’ve used the image by using the wayback machine. However, it shows the opposite – that I’ve never used that image!
I also had a look at their website, to see what I could find out about ‘Victoria Boyd’. All of the photos of the people looked ‘not quite right’. So I did a reverse image search for a couple of them, including Victoria, and it turns out that they’re all from a site which uses to generate photos of people.
So not only are their claims fake, so are their people!
I reported their site to the hosting company they used for their website and emails and I’m pleased to say that their account has been suspended! (I suspect they’ll be back with a different domain and host, but I’m glad they’ve been stopped on that domain!)
Why are they sending these emails? It might be to scam people out of money and/or it could also be to get backlinks – a very yucky SEO tactic.
For more on other times this company has sent spurious emails (including sending DMCAs for other free stock photos), using a range of domains, please see these posts: